REVOLVER WEEK IN REVIEW: 5/30 TO 6/06/2008

Every since we featured Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine, along with a few of his Gigantour cohorts, on the cover of our April issue, we’ve been getting fan mail for Dave from some chick who is apparently obsessed with the shred-and-snarl master. Something comes every week or so, and the mail has been escalating in size and insanity, starting out as standard envelopes with doodling all over them and rambling letters inside, and becoming now full-scale care packages full of such disturbing “gifts” as, on one recent occasion, original paintings of dishwashing detergent bottles and other common household items. Needless to say, we have not been passing this shit along to the good Mr. Mustaine.

This Tuesday we had the displeasure of receiving two of these packages at once. They’ve been sitting on the shelf above Managing Editor Ian’s desk for the last few days—we’re too scared to open them—until today (Friday) executive editor Brandon’s curiosity got the best of him.

At least it’s not a package for Anthrax…

The first package was stuffed with around 15 cardboard tubes from the center of toilet paper rolls; they’d been painted different colors and had the labels from water bottles, bean cans, chip bags, etc., pasted onto them. The second, even larger package was full of the even longer cardboard tubes from paper towel rolls, also painted in a range of hues, some with polka dots.

Dave Mustaine, all this could be yours.

On a much more genuinely generous front, photo director Rebecca and design director Josh got all dressed up and went to a gala that Rebecca’s aunt throws every year to raise money for her charitable organization, the Jed Foundation, which works to increase suicide awareness on college campuses. (Rebecca’s cousin Jed took his own life in 1998 at age 20.) There they brushed shoulders with a very different sort of celebrity than we generally mingled with: Joey Pants from The Sopranos, James Watson (the dude who discovered fucking DNA!), Claire Shipman from Good Morning America, and Duncan Sheik, who was there playing show tunes. Despite their urge to ask Duncan if he took requests and knew Metallica’s “Fade to Black,” Rebecca and Josh held their tongues and managed to trick everyone into believing that they are polite and proper members of society.

Another person who seems to pull off that trick, editorial assistant Val had been complaining about her wisdom teeth last week, and on Wednesday she finally got one of them pulled, a fittingly brootal procedure to endure while working at Revolver. As a result she ended up leaving the office early the next day due to, well, we’re not really sure…she mumbled something about “blood” and we told her to go home. At least her apparently more-sadistic-than-usual dentist gave her this “awesome” T-shirt for all her pain.

That shirt says “oral.”

As cool as that Tee is, we got a couple maybe-even-more-awesome ones this week. A PR company sent us a shirt with the sweet design below printed on it care of self-described “community-centric T-shirt company” Threadless, where members submit original designs and everyone votes on which should be printed. We didn’t vote for this one (’cause we’re not members), but we would have…’cause we’re dorky editors with a weakness for puns.

Sorry about the grabbed-from-the-Threadless-website image here—Val was supposed to pose with the shirt for an original shot, but she left too early on Thursday due to the “blood” and shit.

We also got our own new badass Revolver T-shirts. You’ll just have to swing by the Revolver booth on this summer’s Mayhem Fest, with Slipknot, Disturbed, DragonForce, Mastodon, among many others, to get yours.

Josh and assistant art director Ali: You wish you looked this cool—and, in Ali’s case, this stoned.

Finally, speaking of Mayhem Fest, we learned this week that in our forthcoming Mayhem Fest spectacular issue (out on newsstands June 17), we misspelled Airbourne frontman Joel O’Keeffe’s last name “O’Keefe.” (Sorry, mate.) Editor in chief Tom punched his computer monitor when he found out, knocking it over and hurting his hand. He may have also aggravated his back because he’s working from home today—“It hurts to walk,” he says. We might seem like a bunch of morons sometimes, but don’t think we don’t take this shit seriously.

Tom: “Hey guys. I’m writing this while lying on my back and typing with one hand. Brandon, good call on the computer attack. I was wondering why my shit had gone all crooked, and totally forgotten that I freaked out and punched the thing. You should have been a doctor!”